The warehouses are full!
This statement is true. No one doubts it. Officials came out and announced it with numbers, months, and tons. There is enough wheat for ten months, barley for eight, and sugar for twelve. The numbers are there, clear and declared.
And the Jordanian bought the candle despite that!
Not because he doesn't believe the numbers. But because he remembers the bus!
In March 2020, when Jordan locked itself down with an unprecedented curfew, the government announced it would deliver bread to homes! The promise was beautiful, the intent was good, the bakeries were open, and the bread was available! But the bus did not pass through many neighborhoods on time! And when the bus was delayed, people gathered in front of bakeries, risking their lives for a loaf in a country whose government said it would deliver the loaf to them! The stock was there. The problem was with the bus. And the bus never passed!
This memory cannot be erased by a statement. It cannot be reassured by statistics. And it is not forgotten when an official comes out to say the warehouses are full. Because the Jordanian citizen learned one lesson in 2020 that he hadn’t learned in any book: that the distance between the correct number and the delivered loaf is not mathematical! It is a bus!
And when the bus is delayed, lost, or runs out of fuel, the numbers are of no use!
That’s why he is buying the candle today!
The government said do not rush, and rushing hurts the economy and raises prices. And this is all true. But there’s a parallel truth that no government in the world states this bluntly: that individual rushing is the inevitable price for the absence of a practically felt assurance, not just a declared one!
The difference between knowing there is wheat in the warehouse and feeling that this wheat will reach you on a bus passing at the right time is the difference between reassurance and the candle!
When Ibn Rushd responded to Al-Ghazali in "The Incoherence of the Incoherence," he did not say that Al-Ghazali was lying! He said that he was attacking reason with reason, thereby proving it despite himself! And today, we face a kind of incoherence of the incoherence that no one has written about: a government attacking fear with numbers, thus proving the fear despite the numbers! Because fear was not born from the absence of the number! It was born from the memory of the bus that did not pass!
And the rush itself is not a single mass. It contains two layers that do not meet: a layer that responds to a living memory, not a virtual illusion, and an opportunistic layer that knows fear is a profitable market and the gap between the number and the bus is a golden opportunity!
The kerosene heater that jumped to fifteen, twenty-five, and thirty dinars in days is not proof of the buyer’s madness! It is proof of the seller's genius in exploiting the gap between the full warehouse and the fearful home!
The biggest monopolist in this equation is not the trader who raised the price! The biggest monopolist is the silence about the emergency plan that the trader fills with his prices!
The officials came out and informed us about the stock. And that was their duty. But no one came out to say: If the power goes out for two hours, this is what the government will do! And if fuel is scarce, this is the priority system for distribution! And we will not repeat the bus experience of 2020 because we have done this and that! These three sentences reassure more than all the warehouse numbers combined! Because they talk about the bus, not the warehouse!
The problem is not the absence of intent! The problem is the absence of a clearly explained plan that bridges the gap between the correct number and the delivered loaf!
In foreign policy, Jordan trusts the king’s policy with a historical confidence gained over decades of precise navigation through a sea of mines!
But in domestic policy, there are opinions and viewpoints about the government’s policy! Not because the intentions are bad but because one bus not passing on time equals a thousand statements!
Iran has placed Jordan's power stations on its lists! And the child connected to a life-support machine does not have a say in regional power equations! And his father, who bought the candle, does not deserve to be told not to rush! He deserves to be told what the state has done to make his candle unnecessary! And no one has yet said that last sentence!
The Jordanian does not buy the candle because he does not trust the state! He buys it because he trusts his memory more than his trust in the bus! And between the two trusts, fear resides! And when fear resides in that gap, the candle turns from a commodity into a stance! He doesn’t buy it! He votes for it! He votes for a light that does not need a bus that never passes!
He does not curse the darkness! He lights his candle and is silent! And that silence is the most severe and enduring curse! Because it is the silence of one who saw the bus pass by the edge of his neighborhood without stopping! Silence from one who remembered the number but forgot that the number does not satisfy!
The question is not why do Jordanians rush?
The question is: what have we done since 2020 to ensure that the bus will pass this time?
Because full warehouses reassure the mind! And a reassured mind asks only once: and who guarantees the bus?
And when it finds no answer, it buys the candle!
And that is not just a candle!
That is the bill for the bus that never passed!
